This checklist goes over essential steps for making your course student-ready and publishing it in Canvas

Checklist items are accompanied by brief explanations and instructions. Checklist items in brief (with details below) are:

☐ Choose and customize the course Home Page
☐ Populate and/or upload your Syllabus
☐ Set up and publish items in Modules
☐ Set up any other features you wish to use
☐ Edit Course Navigation
☐ Recommended: Check accessibility and validate links
☐ Check your work: Student View
☐ Publish the Course

☐ Choose and customize the course Home Page

Where do you want students to "land" when they first log in to your course?

DEFAULT: By default, the course Home Page is a templated page that you can edit. This is a great place for a course welcome or other critical information. Please edit the page so that is is specific for your course by clicking the "Edit" button / pencil icon in the upper right corner. AFTER EDITING, be sure to click "SAVE" below the editing window.

IF USING NON-CANVAS RESOURCES: The home page is a good place to add a link or information about accessing any non-Canvas resources (especially those not shown in the left-side navigation area that are not integrated into Canvas).

TO CHANGE THE HOME PAGE: Click "Choose Home Page" on the instructor menu (normally on the right side of the Home Page; if your browser window is especially narrow, it may appear at the bottom). You can make the Home Page be the Syllabus or Modules, for example.

☐ Populate and/or upload your Syllabus

What are your course policies and schedule?

DEFAULT: By default, the Syllabus page has a template with editable text. Find "Syllabus" as the second item in the left-side navigation menu by default. You can edit the template by clicking the "Edit" button / pencil icon in the upper right corner of the Syllabus page or copy and paste material from a syllabus document you may have prepared outside of Canvas. AFTER EDITING, be sure to click "UPDATE SYLLABUS" below the editing window to save.

SHOW/HIDE COURSE SUMMARY: When editing the Syllabus, there is a check box below the editing window to select or deselect "Show Course Summary." This will show or hide an automatic course summary below your syllabus, with assignment due dates populated based on assignments in Canvas.

TO UPLOAD YOUR SYLLABUS AS A DOCUMENT: Click "Edit" above the Course Syllabus window. Delete any template text you do not need. Be sure to click "UPDATE SYLLABUS" below the editing window to save and be able to open/download your Syllabus.

Syllabus editing window, with the "Document" item selected, and "Upload a Document" highlighted as the method for uploading a syllabus document.

☐ Set up and publish items in Modules

Organize your main course content into weeks, units, or other sequential format.

DEFAULT: By default, Modules (in the left-side navigation menu) contains:

- a published (i.e., it will be visible when the whole course is also published) set of Caltech resources for students, which you can keep, move down, or delete;
- an unpublished sample "Module (Week 1/ Unit 1)" with sample items you can rename, edit, move down, or delete.
- an unpublished instructor resources module, which you can delete or leave hidden; it is only there to help you with reference info about canvas;

PUBLISHING ITEMS: Canvas gives you control over whether individual items within a course will show up for students (item publishing, see below), as well as whether the entire course will show up for students (see the Checklist item, Publish the Course). If a course is unpublished, then no students can access anything, even if individual items are published. If a course is published, then publishing or unpublishing individual items will control student access to those specific items.

NOTE: If you are not using Canvas to organize course material, you may wish to hide Modules altogether; see the checklist item below on editing Course Navigation for information about hiding navigation items.

☐ Set up any other features you wish to use

What other features will you be using within and/or linked through Canvas?

These may include Discussions, Assignments, Quizzes, Grades (i.e. the Canvas gradebook), Zoom, Piazza (a third party Q&A forum tool), Gradescope (a third party tool for collecting and grading problem sets and exams, especially those involving quantitative, theoretical, and/or coding work), and Course Reserves from the Library.

FIND OUT MORE about these and other features in the videos and slides from the Caltech Adaptable Teaching Series.

☐ Edit Course Navigation

What items do students need to access in Navigation?

DEFAULT: By default, there are a number of items in the left-side navigation menu that are active and visible to students, and others that are hidden from students, but show up for instructors and TAs with a "slashed eye" icon next to them.

EDITING THE NAVIGATION MENU: If you are not using all of these items, it is a good idea to hide them. You may also want to show some items that are hidden by default, or rearrange the order of items. The video below shows you how to edit the navigation menu:

☐ Recommended: Check Accessibility and Validate Links

Is the content on pages accessible and do links work?

- Use the built-in Accessibility Checker, available in the Rich Text Editor for any content you have edited or added.
- Use the built-in Link Validator, available in Course Settings.

☐ Check your work: Student View

Does the course appear to students as you expect?

VIEW THE COURSE AS IF YOU WERE A STUDENT: Before proceeding to publish the entire course, it is recommended to use Student View and check through the course to make sure it appears as you would like from a student perspective. After entering student view, navigate throughout your course to view and test pages and features.

TO BEGIN STUDENT VIEW: navigate to your course Home Page and find the icon of the glasses on the upper right-side of the screen. Student View can also be accessed from Syllabus, Announcements, Modules, and Assignments, as well as from the right-side menu in your Course Settings.

Screen image showing instructor menu on home page. "Student View" is highlighted, with text indicating "View the course as if you were a student."

TO END STUDENT VIEW: Find the bright magenta bar along the bottom of the screen (present whenever you are in Student View), and click "Leave Student View."

☐ PUBLISH THE COURSE

Make the entire course accessible to students.

DEFAULT: by default, courses start out as unpublished, so that instructors and TAs can set them up before students gain access. Even if you have published individual items within the course, the whole course, or "Course Status," needs to be "Published" for students to get to any course materials.

TO PUBLISH THE COURSE: navigate to your course Home Page, find the right-side (or bottom of screen if your browser window is narrow) instructor menu. Under Course Status, click "Publish." The image below shows the Course Status in both states: at left, the Course Status is Unpublished, and the "Publish" button is active to change the status; at right, the Course Status is Published, and the "Unpublish" button is active to change the status.

Course status menus: left shows course unpublished, with the "Publish" button active. Right shows course published, with the "Unpublish" button active.